


A Fairly Angsty One About Falling Down the Stairs

by kiraisstillhere



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: and thesevenumbrellas on tumblr had a great prompt so yeah, i'm just here to write some stories and make people feel stuff i guess, so anyway i needed this
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-18
Updated: 2019-04-18
Packaged: 2020-01-15 18:11:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18504358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiraisstillhere/pseuds/kiraisstillhere
Summary: What really happened the night that Klaus got his jaw wired shut?





	A Fairly Angsty One About Falling Down the Stairs

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much to @thesevenumbrellas on tumblr for the ask that lead to this. their blog is really fun, and you can check out the original post/prompt here: https://thesevenumbrellas.tumblr.com/post/183963551398/head-canon-klaus-didnt-fall-down-the-stairs
> 
> i had a lot of fun writing this, even if it is angsty lol
> 
> happy reading!

Klaus remembered muddled speech, as if he were in a pool, and someone was yelling at him through the water. His vision was spotty, but he swore that Pogo was standing over him, holding a phone that was most certainly contraband in the house. He was frantically dialing something and talking to someone on the line while Klaus stared up at him through slowly closing eyes. Every blink felt heavier than the last, and he had a faint feeling that it was so much nicer to be in the darkness, his eyes shut and everything around him blocked out, than it was to see the chandelier and patterns on the ceiling above him.

 

“Master Klaus, please,” Pogo said urgently, placing a hand on Klaus’ shoulder and nudging it ever so slightly. “Please stay awake. You will be safe soon enough.”

 

Klaus struggled to keep focused on Pogo. All he wanted to do was sleep, why wouldn’t Pogo let him? He felt so tired. His limbs were heavy; the sensation reminded him of the weights that he had seen Luther using to practice his talent of super strength. He had tried to carry one, but he couldn’t even lift the lightest of them. Klaus felt his body tingling, little prickles the way that it felt when his foot would fall asleep if he sat too long. He expected pain, but he hadn’t anticipated the way that it might be too much for his body to handle. Pogo looked down at him again, shaking his shoulder once more, eyes were full of worry. Klaus felt his leaden eyelids blink slowly once more. He fought to keep them open, even though every part of him was screaming to do the opposite. Pogo looked up towards the front door, concern still on his face, before disappearing and leaving Klaus alone on the itchy carpet of the foyer.

 

Fuzzy shadows of people came into Klaus’ eyeline soon after, interrupting the patterns on the ceiling above him with their silhouettes. He could still imagine Pogo telling him to stay awake. Were they ghosts? Was he dying? This was how he went away from the world - a stupid mistake that he’d made, an attempt to goof around and have something interest him. The figures made noise, and Klaus gathered that they were living people. Spirits didn’t sound like the adults from the Charlie Brown movies.

 

Klaus was so tired. He just wanted to go to bed, not have these strangers moving his head and putting something with straps around it. Nor did he want them to lift him up and cart him out of the house, into the back of an ambulance. The family had a perfectly good medical area upstairs. He didn’t need a hospital. Where was his father when he could have actually done something good?

 

Klaus was faintly aware of a needle going into his arm and the prick that followed as something was injected into his bloodstream. Slowly but surely, the noises that Klaus was hearing became clearer, and he was beginning to see the features of the people in the back of the ambulance with him. His eyes still felt like they shouldn’t be open, and his brain told him that sleeping sounded  _ really _ good right now.

 

One of the EMTs was a good looking guy, maybe in his 20s, and Klaus wondered briefly if he was going to be able to see a lot of hot people at the hospital. He knew it wasn’t going to be Grey’s Anatomy by any means, but he could hope. He felt his throat move as he tried to compliment the guy, but nothing came out other than a grunt, which immediately made Klaus’ whole face tense with white hot pain, shocks shooting through his jaw.

 

The hurt went away when he closed his eyes, though, and Klaus decided that now was a better time than any to take a nap. He was already basically laying in a bed, and if anything bad happened, they were on their way to a hospital anyway. His lashes started to dip into his vision, and his body started to feel like static again, black and white television fuzz that spread from the center of his back throughout his limbs. He forced himself to keep his eyes open, even though he just wanted to sleep.

 

_ To die: to sleep; No more,and by a sleep  _ _ to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to…  _

 

Ben’s voice echoed in his head, from the leatherbound copy of Hamlet that had taken up residence on his bedside table. The words felt like they were flowing around his brain, sounding exactly the way they had when Ben was standing in the center of his mattress, performing the soliloquy as if his life depended on it. Klaus wondered what his own life depended on. Right now, it seemed that he had to just keep his eyes open, no matter how exhausting it was.

 

“Come on, kiddo, stay with me.” Klaus strained himself to make eye contact with the hot paramedic. The guy met his stare and seemed to look directly into Klaus’ brain.  “What do you wanna be when you grow up?”

 

Klaus didn’t know anything. He wanted to tell the guy off for calling him a kid. He barely knew what he wanted to do when he was given his thirty minutes of free time.

 

His body felt like it was sinking into the padding of the gurney, the cushion swallowing home whole as his vision went blurry again. All of the little lights inside the ambulance flickered, shaping into little stars that speckled the dark machinery around him; it turned into a mechanical wasteland where Klaus could sleep with iron giants, away from the stone of the mausoleum and the grass of the graves around it.

 

\--

 

All of the nurses, and even the on-duty doctor, had looked at Klaus with suspicion when he’d arrived in the emergency room from the ambulance with no adult in sight. He was rushed to the back, the blood that had been smeared messily around his mouth and chin causing more alarm than Klaus had expected. He remembered thinking that it was weird that so many people were around him, and that they were fussing over him - he didn’t get “special treatment” like this at home. 

 

The thing that was bothering Klaus the most was that he was still on a gurney, strapped down and being carted around like some box of supplies rather than a person. His mouth had the sharp tang of blood - a metallic, almost rusty flavor that he couldn’t get rid of. His entire body hurt, but his head was  _ throbbing _ . He felt that, much like stages of grief, there were stages of pain, and somehow, his nerves had catapulted directly to the final one. His jaw felt cemented shut, the joints refusing to move even when he willed them with all his might.

 

The hot paramedic was still with him, and Klaus kind of wanted to tell him that he was attractive, but he also knew that he was twelve and definitely underage. The EMT reminded him of the other pop stars that were featured in the teen magazines that the Academy had been in. Klaus guessed that the guy was just keeping him company - anyone who wasn’t Dad would have been afraid to leave a child alone. He was glad for the presence. It made him feel safe.

 

God, if only he could open his mouth. He could tell them it was all a misunderstanding, and that he really should be going home. Even more than that, Klaus wanted to ask if he could just close his eyes already. His head hurt too much, and staying focused was only making it worse. He squinted his eyes to find a middle ground between what he wanted and what he was supposed to do. Klaus following the rules and doing what people told him to do? Unheard of. Luther would have been amazed.

 

“Hey, we’re gonna put you to sleep now, okay?”

 

Klaus hadn’t even noticed the nurse who had come up to them. The EMT was still sitting in the guest chair in the room that Klaus had been put in. She removed the portable IV in his arm and hooked him up to a real one that was hanging next to the gurney.

 

“They’re going to fix you right up. You’ll be good as new in a few weeks.”

 

She was facing him now, smiling at him sweetly. She put her hand on his shoulder, rubbing gentle circles. Klaus felt comforted, almost happy. His body started to tingle a little, and his arm went cold. His eyes were getting heavier, and he looked at the nurse through his slowly closing lashes.

 

As he succumbed to the anesthesia and his eyes finally closed, Klaus realized that her scrubs made him think of the flowers from the cherry trees in the house’s backyard. In the springtime, they would fall and make a soft pink carpet across the cobblestone, and Klaus would wait until he was able to break away from training sessions to sit and lose himself in the foliage. The color was always spotted with polka dots of white where the less saturated petals had fallen, and Klaus loved every part of it.

 

\--

 

The high heels had been that same pink color, he recalled. It was what had drawn him to the shiny, satin materialed shoes in the first place. They looked so pretty, sitting high on the shelf in Mom’s closet, as if they were some long-forgotten royalty waiting to be freed from their tower on a hill. The waning evening light shown on them from the window, making the little pink gemstones that dotted the fabric glitter like fairy lights on shop windows.

 

He was enamoured.

 

These were Mom’s nice shoes, Klaus realized. He noticed a gorgeous dress hanging on the bar, tucked away from the rest of her outfits. Taking a moment to glance over one shoulder and then the other, Klaus carefully opened the closet door all the way, taking in the array of colors and patterns that he wished he could wear.

 

He gently moved the regular day dresses to the side, exposing one that was like all of the others that Mom wore - an A-line with sleeves to the elbows and a crisp skirt that was waiting to be supported by one of her hoops that sat in the corner next to her closet. The dress itself was a pretty pale green, soft and sweet and matching the delicate stems of the fallen flowers in the yard, with a band of a more plain version of the fabric on the shoes wrapped around the waist like a belt. It sat daintily on its hanger, waiting for the spring to come so that it could be worn once again.

 

Klaus moved the green dress to the side, though he let his fingers linger on the material, longing to put it on and see how it felt, when a sparkle of light caught his eye. It was there just for a moment, until Klaus lifted his head and blocked the beam of sunlight poking into the depths of the closet. He ducked his head again, hoping that the light could reach what he’d seen.

 

He was in luck. The final ray of sunlight glinted off of a gemstone, and Klaus had to investigate. When he reached further in and tugged the final dress into view, he was certain he’d struck gold.

 

Rose gold, that is.

 

The dress that hung proudly before him was the exact same material as the shoes, and Klaus realized that they must have been made as a set. This crowning beauty in the closet was a glamorous strapless evening gown, made to define the body’s curves ever so slightly. A gracefully hidden slit was created by the skirt being pinned at the waist with a rose-shaped brooch encrusted with pink gems. The glint that had caught Klaus’ attention was from the ever-so-small rhinestones sewn on the satin gloves that hung over the shoulder of the hanger. They were barely noticeable in the basic room lighting, but the detail was sure to catch attention, should Grace have worn the outfit to a dinner party, or any event of similar merit.

 

Klaus  _ had _ to wear it.

 

He should have stopped himself, but it was all happening in a dream, and Klaus didn’t want this one to end. He grabbed the pair of high heels from the shelf, thankful that he was able to reach them, and set them at the foot of the unused bed. With shaking fingers, he took the gloves from the hanger and laid them on the bed, followed by the dress itself. He took one last breath before he took the dress from the hanger and slowly stepped into it, sliding the fabric up to his chest and holding it there. He slipped his feet into the heels before standing for a moment, allowing himself to be happy.

 

The mirror the Mom had was positioned in the corner next to her hoop skirts, and Klaus turned to face it, taking in his reflection. Klaus had always been taller and lankier than average, and yet the dress was still too long, something that made him smile. Klaus drew it up in his fists to make it his size, part of his leg being exposed through the slit in the skirt. He marvelled at the too-big shoes, the beauty of their satin fabric and the way they sparkled without light. He could only imagine what they might look like under the glowing lights of a far-off fancy gala.

 

In his reflection, Klaus was just as glamorous as the dress, a stunning Audrey Hepburn or Kim Novak standing in front of admirers. He popped his shoulder and put a hand on his hip, and held his other hand up, pretending to hold a long cigarette holder; he modelled the way he’d seen the actresses in the blueprints for Mom pose. He put on a bright smile, then pouted the made a bored face, and wondered if his cheekbones were too prominent, or just right.

 

He changed out of the dress, not wanting to make the fabric smell like the weed that he felt certain was still lingering on his skin, even though it had been two hours since he had smoked. He wanted to guarantee that Mom’s dress stayed in as pristine condition as it could be, so that she would blow everyone away.

 

“If Dad ever took her out of this godforsaken house,” he muttered to no one in particular (that anyone else could see, anyway). He carefully hung the dress back in its little corner of the closet, tucking it back and covering it with all of Mom’s regular wear once again. He looked back at the shoes, sitting patiently at the foot of the bed before they, too, were put back in place. They looked so different to the rest of the little room, a bright pop of bubblegum pink among the beige blankness of the walls.

 

In a moment, a thought presented itself to Klaus. Dad was in his study with the doors shut, down the stairs and far enough away that he wouldn’t hear the awkward clunk of high heels that didn’t fit walking down the hall, and his other siblings were busy in their rooms, getting ready to sleep. Plus, they didn’t really care what happened in their hallway, considering that the house already made weird sounds most of the time.

 

Was it a bad idea? Sure. Klaus could have taken the shoes and the dress off and carried them to his room with no worries, but he was so caught up in how pretty he felt, and how much he wanted to stay in them for as long as he could that the thought hadn’t occurred to him until he was midair.

 

A sharp pain cracked through his back to the rest of his body, the object narrowly missing his spine in the calculated attack. Klaus felt his legs simply give out from beneath him, the heels slipping off in the fall. He saw the edge of one of the steps on the staircase coming closer in a way that Klaus couldn’t stop before closing his eyes. Stars spasmed across the darkness behind his eyelids as he felt his jaw connect with the hardwood, missing the carpeted middle of the stairs by a long shot. Thanks to gravity, his head bounced up, only for his body to continue its fall. The front of his face was next, his mouth smashing into the wood again while his body jolted from the contact. 

 

_ Please don’t let my nose be broken _ , Klaus silently begged.

 

Klaus’ fall down the stairs felt like it stretched through time, every roll marked by somewhere on his body landing on the edges of the steps until he stopped at the foot of the stairs, sprawled on his side. Blood gushed from his nose and mouth, his injuries all happening so quickly that he couldn’t even feel the amount of pain he was in. Something dripped down his temple into his hair, and Klaus wondered offhand if blood took a long time to be washed out of hair.

 

He looked through squinted eyes at his father as the older man’s shoes appeared next to Klaus’ face. Reginald used the foot of his cane to push Klaus flat on his back, looking down on him with disappointment and disgust on his face. Klaus felt a keening groan of pain escape his body, but the ringing in his ears was quickly growing way too loud.

 

“You are disappointing, Number Four,” Reginald said bluntly. “Dressing up for nothing? You are not your sisters. You will not do this again.”

 

Klaus wished he could have spit at him. He felt, for the first time, that he truly, honestly hated the man that he called Dad.


End file.
